


Baby Steps

by teamchaosprez



Category: Kill la Kill (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Depression, Existential Crisis, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Platonic Relationships, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery, Recovery, Suicide Attempt, goddamn these tags are heavy, i promise it's not that bad it's mostly satsuki thinking too much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 12:48:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16096001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamchaosprez/pseuds/teamchaosprez
Summary: Satsuki Kiryuin is struggling to get by after defeating the life fibers, and falls no matter how many times she gets up again. Luckily, she has a little sister that's a little too determined for her own good.





	Baby Steps

**Author's Note:**

> i've been into kill la kill for like two years and i haven't written any actual fic for it despite rping satsuki for roughly the same amount of time i'm so ashamed of myself

It all started when Nonon came downstairs to get a glass of water and found Satsuki with slit wrists, dying on the floor. She had shrieked for Gamagori, yelled at him to contact a hospital, held the much taller girl and tried to tell her everything would be fine, she would be just fine. She wouldn’t say it out loud, but Satsuki was frustrated and angry that her girlfriend and best friend had dared to stop her plan, dared to keep her from taking control of her fate and ending her life. If it could be called that - she had no purpose, nothing but a sizeable inheritance and a sister that she struggled to reconnect with and was certain would be better off without her. She had no reason to survive.

She had worked her entire life to kill her mother and stop the life fibers, and now that was done, and she had no direction to go in. Suicide may have seen like weakness to anybody else, but to Satsuki it was the only way to take care of everything she left unsolved. To Satsuki, it was bravery. And here she was, being carted to the hospital, being brought back from the brink of death and having her wrists all bandaged up. Having the other patients in the psych scold her in the coming weeks, because she was the great Satsuki Kiryuin, the girl who saved the world, she shouldn’t throw her life away. If they were there because of similar problems to her own, because of depression and trauma, shouldn’t they understand?

She was a good actress, Satsuki had faked it through so very much that she had no problem faking it through this as well. She acted like her old self, shared the bare minimum that could get her by, and was released within a month. Nonon had asked her to move out the morning after she returned home, said she and Gamagori couldn’t help Satsuki the way she deserved and needed to be helped.

Nonon revealed then that she had been speaking to Ryuko, and Satsuki tensed at that. She had been trying to connect with her sister at first, trying hard; did all sorts of things that normal teenage girls were supposed to do. But none of it felt natural, not really, and when she almost hit Mako Mankanshoku for grabbing her when she hadn’t expected it, she decided that this thing - family - just wasn’t for her. She couldn’t be normal, and she wasn’t sure if she should even continue trying. So she didn’t.

It had been six months since she talked to Ryuko or the Mankanshokus, and knowing that Nonon had been talking to them about her behind her back made her feel sick. “She agreed to take you home with her. She’s coming to pick you up this evening, that should give you plenty of time to pack.” Her girlfriend gave her a calm, infuriatingly calm smile. Satsuki felt a hefty feeling of sadness, betrayal, and a bit of anger beginning to develop in her chest.

“And you made this decision without consulting me? You decided on what should happen in my future?” she didn’t care that her frustration was beginning to seep into her words. Satsuki was an adult, she could decide on things herself. She hadn’t been allowed the decision to take her own life; now she wasn’t even allowed to decide on where she lived. Not for the first time since defeating her mother, Satsuki felt powerless, small, and helpless. She wanted to cry, but she had never done that in front of another person - had barely ever done it alone - so she held the angry tears back.

“Satsuki, we’re just trying to help you. You tried to kill yourself. Healthy people don’t try to kill themselves.” Nonon was being so reasonable it was infuriating. The former class president let out a heavy and shaky sigh, covering her face with her hand for a moment. “You need to heal, and I don’t think you can do that if you stay with the same people you’ve been with your whole life, you know? Gamagori, Sanageyama, Inumuta, and Iori will all be here for you, of course, but… you need to bond with your sister anyway, and as much as I hate to admit it, that Mako girl never fails to put a smile on someone’s face.”

“A smile can’t fix anything, Nonon!” Satsuki snapped, feeling like the rubber band that was her calm mental state finally broke.

The argument didn’t do much of anything to help her case, so Satsuki just rushed upstairs to her room and began putting her very limited remaining belongings away in a bag so that she would be ready when her sister came. She sat, put her head in her hands, and groaned in frustration.

* * *

 

Satsuki felt badly about the system Honnoji Academy put in place, and had since the moment the school closed down. As she stood in front of the new home of the Mankanshokus, staring up at the middle class home, she realized that the system she had put in place held the family back. Now that Barazo had been able to get an actual medical license, the family was much more well off; they no longer struggled for food, and from what she understood, their children had been better able to flourish. She only wished she hadn’t been the cause behind their years of poverty.

She was cut out of her self loathing thoughts, however, when a very excited ball of energy rushed out of the house and attached itself to her front. Startled, Satsuki looked down to Mako with widened blue eyes, and it took several moments for her heart rate to settle down. She didn’t like to be touched, she really didn’t, she was worried that the contact would turn sexual and painful and… and she forced herself to take a deep breath, calm down, try and force down her trauma for the time being.

“I’m so happy that you’re going to be living with us!” Mako declared, her voice just as cheerful as ever as she finally released her death grip on Satsuki, grabbed her by the hands and tugged her into the house. “I’ve been thinking of all sorts of different ideas for things we can do together to help you learn how to be normal!” Those words stung more than they probably should have, and Satsuki couldn’t help but flinch slightly. She opened her mouth to try and force herself to say something, anything of substance, but for once in her life the words just wouldn’t come.

“Okay, okay, Mako, that’s enough.” Thank God for Ryuko Matoi. Satsuki felt an immeasurable amount of relief when her younger sister approached. “Can you go get something for us to eat real quick? We can talk more about what we’re going to do later.”

Mako nodded enthusiastically and ran off, and for several moments Satsuki was stuck just standing across from her sister. Trying to figure out what she was supposed to say to the sister she had longed for for years, what she was supposed to say to make it better that she’d been all but avoiding her for months. Luckily, she didn’t have to say much of anything, because Ryuko was the one to approach her first, wrapping her arms around the older sister tightly. A bit awkwardly, but tightly.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Ryuko said, sounding quite a bit like she wasn’t used to expressing her feelings. Satsuki understood; she could relate. Emotions were hard when she had been trying to pretend they didn’t exist for a majority of her life. “Look, you’re gonna get better, okay? Me and the Mankanshokus are gonna help you get through your depression and trauma and whatever the hell else. And you and I are gonna get really close, like we’ve been normal sisters our whole lives.”

Easier said than done, Satsuki knew, but she wasn’t going to rain on her sister’s parade with her pessimism. When Ryuko got determined about something, she wouldn’t stop until she had accomplished it; Satsuki supposed that the two of them were alike in that sense. She would try to cooperate with her sister for now; she could at least try to do everything the girls that wanted to help her had planned. She doubted it would work, but she knew just giving up again would hurt both of them.

So Satsuki nodded, and let Ryuko take her by the wrist and lead her upstairs to the room she was assigned. It wasn’t very spacious, but there was enough room for her things, and as Mako cheerfully popped her head in to announce as soon as she set down her bag to unpack it, it was right down the hall from Ryuko’s. She and Nonon had shared a room, so she got the sense that her nights were about to become very lonely, but she knew better than to complain. 

She thanked her sister earnestly, Ryuko left, and Satsuki sat on the bed with her head in her hands and a deep, heavy sigh.

* * *

 

For the first few days she lived with the Mankanshokus, Satsuki was honestly too busy to feel bad, with any combination of Ryuko, Mako, and the rest of the family dragging her along to various events and activities. She wasn’t happy, she thought that emotion was impossible at this point, but at least she wasn’t a lump of depression and suicidal thoughts and trauma anymore. Physical contact with both Ryuko and Mako came often enough that it had stopped startling her, and on the morning of the third day, she woke up feeling… optimistic, for the first time in her life. Like she was making progress; like she could heal from the damage done by years of carrying the weight of the world.

After sunset, though, when Satsuki laid down to get some sleep, she became acutely aware of how badly she had been broken, traumatized, hurt. She tossed and turned for nearly an hour, and even sleep didn’t offer any salvation; in her mind, she saw Ragyo standing over her, touching her inner thigh, telling her how she failed, she wasn’t good enough, her only purpose now was to become a perfect little doll of a daughter again. Her touch reached up, up, up…

And Satsuki woke up with a sharp gasp, sitting up in bed quickly and suddenly as she clutched at the covers, struggled to breathe, struggled to make sense of where she was and what was going on. She practically threw the blanket off of her body, trying to free herself from any restraints so that she could breathe, but it didn’t help, it didn’t do her any good, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think, she was going to die, the walls were closing in around her…

“Satsuki?”

The sound of her name barely broke into her thoughts, and dark blue eyes glanced up quickly to meet with the worried face of her younger sister. Ryuko approached her quickly, and Satsuki tried to pull herself together, tried to make herself feel calm again so that she could be strong, but all she managed to do that was any different was let out a strangled sob and curl in a little further on herself. Ryuko reached a hand for her, hesitated for a moment, and rubbed Satsuki’s upper back gently.

“Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. You’re safe. Just breathe.” For once in the time they had known each other, the surprisingly gentle words from the younger girl didn’t come across as awkward or unsure. Satsuki wondered if Ryuko went through something similar, if she too had flashbacks and panic attacks deep into the night. It wasn’t that far off, she supposed. “Can I hold you?”

The former class president nodded, and her sister climbed into the bed beside her, wrapped her arms around her. Satsuki’s breathing slowly returned to normal. She slowly calmed down.

She was vaguely aware of Ryuko’s breathing slowing to suggest that she was asleep, and she didn’t find much difficulty in following suit.

**Author's Note:**

> please comment if you enjoyed!


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